That I look satisfied in the picture from my high school graduation, was because of the grades from Rudolf Steiner School in Gothenburg. Despite neglecting my homework from my father's death during my first year of
high school, I received a 4/5. I was going to be a father and had given up my dream of becoming an actor, instead wanting to become a published author because, in my naivety, I believed I had a better chance of getting rich that way. However, I understood that I needed some kind of unique and extreme life experience to get published, as it was no longer like the 1940s when being a genius was enough.
Until I found that unique and extreme life content, I thought I would work as a teacher. A year after graduating, I started at the Waldorf Seminar in Kungälv. To stay connected with the essence of book publishing, I published an anthology with my classmates' poems. It was called "En dag i natten dold" (A Day Hidden in the Night). Even though I wrote poems myself, I did not include my own.
It felt more and more like the life with my wife and child prevented me from achieving the extreme. I started provoking my teachers by lecturing them during classes. They probably thought I was crazy. My idea was that if I had this life with a wife and child and worked as a Waldorf teacher, my only chance at a unique and extreme life content was to become some kind of subverter of anthroposophy in Sweden.
So, I applied to the Rudolf Steiner Seminar in Järna, the Nordic anthroposophy's Mecca, and was promised a place. We arranged an apartment and moved. My wife was pregnant with our second child. I had already started writing and publishing my own anthroposophical literature, which I thought could give me the authority for subversion.
At the interview at the seminar, Per Hallberg dismissed me; I was suddenly not welcome. He had probably received information about my style from Franz Peter Waritsch, who led the Waldorf Seminar in Kungälv. However, this did not stop me from trying to gather followers around my revolution. But the fire never ignited. I worked at a daycare center for children for a year and then returned with my family to Gothenburg. My attempts to find a unique and extreme life content began to strain my wife - and after two years of trying to keep the marriage alive in Gothenburg, separation and divorce became a fact.
Now I thought I was free to use alcohol and drugs to achieve unique and extreme life experiences. I couldn't afford to travel. I studied ethnology at the University of Gothenburg to do something while continuing to seek the unique and extreme. Partying has the advantage for such seeking that it combines greater fearlessness with unexpected encounters.
My life during child-free days was violent and dangerous. I associated with interesting but dangerous people. And despite many extreme experiences, I didn't find them unique enough. The lifestyle took a toll on my health, I lost some virility and constantly lost valuable contacts. For example, I smashed my guitar at a party with the advertising agency where I was interning, which scared my boss.
So, I sobered up and remarried. Now I tried to achieve the unique and extreme through political agitation on the internet, but it was only when I started trolling that I began the journey of experiences that provided the material for my book "Så blev jag ett av Sveriges värsta nättroll" (How I Became One of Sweden's Worst Internet Trolls) (Pug Förlag, 2020).
However, I didn't know then that I was gathering material for a book, even though that was the ultimate goal of everything extreme I did, so I continued with other attempts and even returned to partying with dangerous people in 2012. In 2013, I sobered up and have remained so. But I had managed to gather unique and extreme experiences that would surely sell books - but perhaps should remain unpublished for the sake of those involved...
However, I didn't know then that the most terrible thing awaited me: That the state would subject my beloved, beautiful, kind son to a prolonged and painful death. It is a material with such literary explosive power that it could transform the World. It's everything I've secretly wished for. But I would trade it in a second - to get my son back. So, be careful what you wish for.
Very powerful. I'm glad you have a Substack. Keep writing.
Wow. Thank you. I will be hopefully and patiently waiting for you to explosively transform the world. It needs it.